Darwin's World: An Epic of Survival (The Darwin's World Series Book 1)

by Jack L Knapp

  We took our time leaving, Lilia going on ahead, me establishing a trail that would be discovered but not quickly. I wanted the guards to follow and run into the traps.

  They might find the cabin, even though it wasn’t close, but let them take injuries first.

  I carried the saw and shovel, Lilia carried the axe and file. There had been no alarm when we reached Millie. We walked along the downed tree, changed course to the north, then headed east.

  The file was in my pack, I carried the saw in one hand, my bow in the other; Lilia carried her bow, an arrow on the string, the axe slung by a cord. Millie carried her bow and the shovel, also slung. We moved silently, Lilia leading, me bringing up the rear and erasing evidence of our passing, concentrating on stealth. There was no sound behind us.

  Sooner or later, someone would discover the dead sentry. Would they even be aware of the missing tools? Were they careful in how they accounted for things? Perhaps axes and saws were periodically taken out for sharpening, so no one might immediately realize anything was missing. They’d only know that a sentry had been killed. Had another guard done it, someone with a grudge?

  #

  We kept a low profile during the next two weeks.

  I avoided using the axe near the cabin; the sound of chopping carries a long way. I still used it, but only when I was cutting farther east. For most cutting, I used the saw, staying on the north, east, or south of the cabin, away from the side closest to the mine. We couldn’t conceal all the signs of living in the vicinity, but we did what we could.

  Lee asked a question one evening when we were working by the fireplace.

  “Matt, how did you know about doing all the things you did on that raid? I couldn’t have planned it, nor could my father. He was a good man, knowledgeable about weapons, but no warrior. He might still be alive had he been more skilled in fighting,” he mused. “But from what you have told us, it was almost like you knew what the guards would do.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t know. I just considered what I would do in their place.

  “The guards are not well trained, we know that from the man we killed by the fire and the others we’ve killed. I saw no supervision. The guard was sleepy and looking into the fire destroyed his night vision. Maybe they don't expect trouble from humans. Maybe he believed that animals wouldn't approach the fire.

  “Anyway, I got a lot of information from books and correspondence courses. I was a weekend warrior, a reservist in the American Army. I trained weekends and during the summer, but I never got called up for duty. I had a commission and I’d been promoted. The active services decided they didn’t need an over-aged reservist to take one of the few command slots better given to an officer already on active duty.

  “I finally retired. I’d never heard a shot fired in anger, but I took a lot of courses, waiting for the call that never came.

  “I worked on a number of disaster-recovery assignments though, whenever the government needed trained people fast. We deployed to the west during the great California earthquake of 2015 and we fought forest fires during the extended drought years of the early 21st Century. I learned a lot about living and working outdoors during training and while fighting fires. Things got pretty dicey after the earthquake too, so I suppose the government got their money’s worth. I got old and sick, later on after I retired, but the Futurist grabbed me before I died.

  “Some of my experience is useless, of course. I know a lot about modern weapons and how to employ them, about parachuting, commanding large formations of infantrymen, logistics, stuff like using a road net to move troops around, a lot more. But basic woodcraft skills and constructing hasty traps and barriers, how to survive if I was separated from friendly forces and then evade and escape, I learned about those things early from the courses and deployments, and I never forgot them. A couple of the courses I went through were designed to be something you never forgot!”

  Chapter 20

  “As to your original question, we had a saying. ‘Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance’. The rule of six P’s was a joke, but at the same time it wasn’t. I was careless when I planned this raid; if I had been planning an operation for a real infantry patrol, we would have rehearsed everything.

  “After the plans are made, you walk through what you intend to do and refine the plan. Then you rehearse it again, with all the changes. For a night raid, you practice executing the plan at night.

  “You plan for things like the sentry, even if you're not sure there'll be one. Contingency plans, supplies, people to execute them, all of those become a part of the final operation plan.

  “I didn’t do those things because we didn’t have more people or extra supplies anyway. So I just made careful plans. They were good enough, this time.”

  #

  I examined the tools; the shovel needed sharpening. I used the file sparingly; I didn’t want to wear it out. I followed the filing by smoothing the edge with a rock I'd found.

  The axe got the same treatment, then I started on the saw.

  This one was designed more for crosscutting than cutting with the grain. Saws designed to cut parallel to the wood’s grain have a more aggressive tooth shape and a wider offset. This cuts a wider channel and lessens the chance the saw blade will become stuck, a condition called binding. I tried to keep the set angle and the saw’s teeth the same shape while I lightly filed the dull edges.

  This saw had a wide, heavy blade and an oversized handle that resembled the one on a carpenter’s handsaw. The teeth stopped before the blade's end, leaving a gap for the final two inches; for two-person use, a second handle could be added at that point. The rivet holes had already been punched through the blade.

  Could I reuse the rivets I’d salvaged from the sword? For now, there was no second person so the second handle could wait.

  “Tomorrow I’ll start cutting a road to haul wood back. I’ll remove underbrush and small trees down to ground level.”

  “Why a road, Matt?” Lee asked. He got a nod from Sandra. I had noticed that she usually agreed with what he said.

  “I can drag a lot more weight than I can carry. I’ll build a stone boat…”

  That got an interruption from Millie. “Why in the world would you worry about a boat now, and one made of stone certainly won’t float!”

  I chuckled along with the rest. “A stone boat is a sled to move heavy weights. You select two trees, say about eight inches in diameter, then cut them about six feet long. Cut the front edge at an angle and if you do the same to the back you can drag it in either direction.

  “The two trees are the only thing in contact with the ground, so that reduces friction. Fasten smaller limbs crosswise between the runners, that’s what the main logs are called, and they hold the runners parallel to each other. You can attach as many cross-pieces as you want or weave ropes between the crosspieces.”

  I got nods as they visualized what I was talking about.

  “You use the axe or camp-axe to chip and rough-shape the runners so they're easier to drag. Chop a narrow notch beneath them so you can tie the crosspieces on. That will protect the ropes. People used the sleds originally to haul heavy stones out of fields and that’s how they got the name. Most of the time, they hitched horses or oxen to the stone boat, but we don’t seem to have those. We’ll attach two ropes instead, and that will allow two people to pull together. Wood isn’t as heavy as stone, so it should work.

  “We’ll make our version about three feet in width. I can only carry about a hundred pounds, maybe a little more if I’m walking along an animal trail, less if I’m carrying stuff cross-country. The stone boat should be able to move ten times that weight if I make a road for it. The road only has to be wide enough so the sled won’t hang up on obstacles.”

  #

  We settled in for the night. Morning would come early and we had no trouble falling asleep. Lee and Sandra were a few feet apart from the rest of us.

  Sandra had been providing the primary ca
re for Lee as his wounds healed, so maybe that was why they’d separated from us. It was the way it was, there was no need for me to worry about it.

  Worry came with the dawn. We were finishing our simple breakfasts when I heard a shout from outside, “Hello, in the cabin. Can you understand me?”

  We scrambled for weapons and I moved to the window. There was a man across the clearing, twenty feet from the cabin door. He was armed and dressed much as the men we’d fought. I couldn’t see anyone with him, but that meant nothing; they could easily be hidden in the woods.

  “I can hear you. What do you want?”

  “I mean you no harm. Can we talk without fighting?”

  With that, he took the short sword from its scabbard and stuck it point-down in the ground by his foot. He made a production of it to make sure I saw what he’d done. He had the same sort of small shield, although his appeared to be better made, and he dropped that by the sword.

  “All right. You can come up to the cabin. For now, let’s just talk through the window. I won’t take action unless you show you’re an enemy.”

  How had this man found us? Had he followed our trail after the raid?

  The stranger walked up to the window, stopped four feet away, and waited. I opened the window and looked at him. He spread his hands wide, then slowly turned around to show he had no weapons, then sat down on the ground.

  Keeping my voice low, I passed my intentions to the others.

  “Lilia watches through the window. The rest of you, bar the door after I’m out and stay alert. I’ll leave my weapons inside. Maybe he’s not here to attack us.”

  Sandra unbarred the door, Millie opened it and I stepped outside. I slowly held my arms our, turned as he’d done, then folded my legs under me and sat down.

  Lilia was my hidden ace, armed with her bow and with an arrow on the string. Sandra would also have the crossbow ready by now if it should be needed. He probably also had someone in hiding.

  “You the one that raided us?”

  After a brief hesitation, I nodded.

  “I’m one of the mine foremen. The people I work for sent me to see if I could talk to you.”

  I simply nodded. Mine foremen? The mine looked like something that might be in use downtime, and he’d now told me he headed a crew, so there were probably other crews.

  “I’m guessing you’re local.”

  “I am. I was here before they hired me and they also hired a few others from my tribe. The mine owners pay with metal tools and weapons, but they won’t give us anything advanced.

  “As for weapons, they give us what you see. We needed the metal; we’d been working on better spears, but we didn’t bring them to the mine. They told us we’d get what we needed.

  “I brought seven men and a woman with me to the mine. We get fed, clothed, and housed, plus they gave us a few metal tools that we sent back to the tribe. We kept the knives for our own use.

  “Cindy’s a cook, the rest of us work as miners. We use picks and shovels, plus sledges and drills for breaking up the rock. We also install timber shoring in the shaft. There are handcarts on tracks, but the carts never leave the mine. I don’t think they want wheels here unless we make them ourselves.”

  “None of your people are guards?”

  “No. The ones who won’t work or that need a lot of supervision are the guards. They’re just thugs.

  “I’m not at all sorry that some of them have been removed. We’ve also had deserters. Have you seen them?”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t invite them to stay around.”

  He nodded. He could figure it out. I was here, they weren’t.

  “So how did you find me?”

  Me, not us. There was no reason to let him know how many others were inside the cabin. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn’t.

  “I wasn’t looking for you specifically. My supervisor told me to find whoever had taken the tools and try to reason with them. If it looked like talking wouldn’t work, then I was to make sure they didn’t raid us again.”

  “What if I hadn’t wanted to be reasonable?”

  “I didn’t come alone. There are others in the woods, but so long as we can talk instead of fight, there’s no reason for this to be unpleasant.”

  I was all for pleasant. Especially since we were otherwise trapped.

  “My employers are from the future but I don’t think they’re the same as the ones who transplanted us here. We can't be sure, though; they don't tell us much about themselves. You weren't born here, right? You were transplanted by the people from the future?”

  I nodded, and he continued. “Anyway, they aren’t interested in killing unless it’s necessary. That’s why they’ve kept the malcontents and thugs employed, better to watch them at the mine than have to fight them.

  “They want the ore, not a war. The guards are there to watch for animals, not people. There are big, really bad animals around. Have they bothered you?”

  I just nodded.

  He continued, “Anyway, I don’t think the mine operators are the same as the down-timers who sent us here. They don’t seem to be as advanced, even if they can cross dimensions. They just seem different. I don’t think the ones who brought us here have any need to mine anything.”

  I silently agreed. Maybe there were two groups from the future involved? Could there be more than two?

  “OK. I only raided you because I needed tools. We’ve got a wounded man, hurt in a fight with a bear, and we can’t travel until he’s well. We intend to leave but we’ll have to wait until spring now. I needed the tools to cut firewood.”

  “So if we offer to trade you what you need, hire you to do things for us, you won’t keep raiding?”

  “Sure. I’d rather trade than fight anyway. We’ve had a hard time as it is. That bear was really dangerous and there was also a cat. Maybe not a saber-tooth, but big and nasty just the same.”

  He looked at me with new respect. “You took on a bear and a big cat and survived? I’m impressed. There are two kinds of those, a saber-tooth and a slightly smaller one that we call a dagger-tooth. There’s one guy who insists it’s a scimitar-tooth, some kind of scientist before he was transplanted. But you fought two of the big animals?”

  I nodded. “It got pretty iffy. I prefer they leave us alone and I’m happy to leave them alone if they do. There was a lion, too, a lioness like the ones that lived in Africa.”

  “Only one lion? They usually hunt in packs or prides. There are sometimes solitary males, but it’s rare to see a lone female. Sometimes a young one gets chased out of the pride.”

  “That’s probably it. This one wasn’t too smart; she tried to jump a huge deer head on and the buck killed her. We call it a stag-moose. It might be related to the Irish elk.”

  “Big antlers, palmated and spiked?” I nodded. “We know about those. We don’t tackle them unless we’ve got half a dozen hunters at least, they’re bad news. And we don’t dare hunt the big animals. There are mammoths or mastodons, maybe both because I don’t know the difference, and a kind of hairy ox, antelopes and wild cattle too. These aren’t your milk-cows, they’re not even the longhorns that lived in Texas. The critters around here would simply kill anything from my home timeline. Tough? The word doesn’t do them justice. Black bear, the one you took on?”

  I shook my head. “Not even a grizzly. This one was bigger and built for running. The legs were longer and thinner than a grizzly's, I think.”

  He nodded. “Short-faced bear. Big, fast, and tough, but they don’t usually hunt people.”

  “This one was injured. Even so, he was a hard fight. I wouldn’t want to have to try killing one that was healthy. By the way, my name's Matt.”

  “I’m Robert.” He pronounced it Ro-bear, which made me think he was possibly from France down-time. But maybe he came from somewhere else; European naming conventions ignore borders.

  “You can keep the things you stole, and we can probably trade you some other stuff. We could u
se meat and there might be other things you could do. We don’t have good, reliable hunters, so our food comes from downtime. The mine owners would prefer it be obtained here and so would we. There’s plenty of game around, so if you can kill and butcher it we can provide labor to haul it to the mine.”

  “I think we can do that. I’ll need to talk this over with my people. Can I approach your mine?”

  “Better not. Just build a fire and make it smoke, somewhere that’s not too far from the mine. I’ll come out or send one of the other foremen to meet you. You’ve killed a fair number of the guards, and even the thugs and failures we use for keeping watch might decide they’re not interested in being friendly. The best thing for everyone would be if you didn’t have anything to do with them, and if you have women here, don’t send them.”

  I nodded in understanding.

  “I’ll head back now. Let me know what you decide. So long as you don’t raid us again, we’ll consider this issue closed. I’ll talk to the mine operators and they won’t send any of the guards out this way. That will help avoid any future trouble.”

  With that, he got to his feet and I did too.

  Robert raised a hand in farewell and glanced at the window above us. No dummy, he knew he was being watched. He simply turned and walked back to the sword and shield he’d left near the forest. As he picked up the weapons, a second man, then a third moved out of the shadows to meet him.

  They disappeared into the forest as I went back inside.

  I would explain to my four companions what we’d talked about and get their opinions, but I thought it was much better for us if we could work with the mine people rather than try to fight them.

  Chapter 21

  Three days later I cleared a shallow fire pit near the top of a bald hill.

  I soon had a fire going, then added a couple of branches with green leaves. Smoke began rising as soon as the flames reached the leaves. Lilia and I moved back into the trees to wait.